Vivienne has painted from an early age. Her first competition that she entered, she won a prize, sold the painting and was given support and encouragement to continue painting. The main influence on her painting career has been the Flying Art School.

She married when she was 27 and moved out to a mixed farming block in the Bringalily District near Millmerran. Her very expressive and dramatic depictions of the drought at that time shocked and offended her family and local community.

These works were exhibited in Canberra at the Rural Outlook 92 Conference, “From the Heartland”. Later these works were to be exhibited at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.

Since then Vivienne has moved to the outskirts of Toowoomba where she paints and prints in her studio.

Vivienne’s work was shown exclusively at Tiffany Jones Fine Art Gallery Buderim Qld. until the gallery closed in 2016.

Vivienne has won many prizes over the years and her works can be found in several Shire Council Offices as well as in private collections in Australia and overseas. In 2015 and 2016 Vivienne’s works were selected as 0ne of thirty works as a finalist in two galleries in Melbourne. One of these paintings “Heaven is Breaking Through” is displayed in one of the offices at USQ.

Vivienne Heckels - The Reeds by the Stream Whisper in the Wind (Online only)